The City Council voted on Tuesday to restore health benefits to gay and unmarried partners of city employees and scores of others, an issue that promises to come up again after two new council members are sworn in later this month.

After hearing spirited arguments from members of the public on both sides of the issue, the council split 4-4. Mayor John Cook, who proposed the ordinance restoring benefits, broke the tie in favor of it despite a ballot initiative in November ending them.

City Reps. Beto O'Rourke and Rachel Quintana, who will leave the council in two weeks, voted in favor of restoring the benefits. Quintana's replacement, Michiel Noe, on Tuesday said he would not have voted the way she did.

"Although I think everyone should have benefits, I would have respected the will of the voters," Noe said. "Now, if the courts had decided that was illegal, then I would have voted according to what the ruling said. But they said that the vote was legal, so again I would respect the will of the voters."

Noe was referring to a ruling last month by U.S. District Judge Frank Montalvo in which he upheld the voter-approved initiative. He wrote that the ordinance did not single out any group such as gay partners of city employees. Montalvo hinted that if the initiative had excluded just domestic partners, it might run against equal-protection assurances in the Constitution.

Cortney Niland, who will replace O'Rourke, could not be reached Tuesday.

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Pastor Tom Brown, who helped organize the November ballot initiative, on Monday said he would organize recall petitions against Cook and city Reps. Susie Byrd and Steve Ortega, who voted in favor of the benefits. Brown said he would wait until September before gathering the signatures needed to support a successful recall.

Byrd said she would ask the City Council to vote to put a charter amendment on the November ballot that would require the city to offer health benefits to gay and unmarried partners of city employees.

The group that proposed the ballot initiative said it only intended to end benefits for gay and unmarried partners of city employees, but about 100 others lost benefits because of the way the initiative was worded.

Only 19 unmarried partners of city employees had received the benefits, an issue that has dominated city politics for the past year.

Just before Tuesday's vote, dozens, including some clerics, huddled outside the council chamber and prayed they would be successful in ending city health benefits for gay and unmarried partners of employees.

Some of the council members who voted against the benefits said they disagreed with the voters, but did not want to go against the voters' will. Voters passed the initiative by 55 percent to 45 percent in November.

"We will be setting a terrible precedent," Holguin said.

Most members of the public who argued against restoring the benefits did so based on religion.

"Homosexual acts are a grave depravity," said the Rev. Michael Rodriguez, who described the teachings of the Catholic Church.

Rodriguez said he wasn't speaking for the diocese. He said city government would go against the pope's doctrine by providing health benefits to gay and unmarried partners of city employees.

"One of the great things about our Catholic faith is that we have a final authority on Earth," he said.

O'Rourke, who was raised Catholic, asked Rodriguez why he chose as a cause fighting the city's domestic-partners benefit -- especially in the face of the priest sex-abuse scandal and the pope's opposition to condom use in Africa, despite an HIV "holocaust" there.

Rodriguez called it a good question.

"Unfortunately, within the Catholic Church, you have the human element," Rodriguez said.

Many of those who spoke in support of restoring partner benefits said that to do otherwise would be to cater to hatred and discrimination.

"I commend you for standing up for the rights of those who have been discriminated against for centuries," Antonio Williams, an El Paso native who recently finished law school, told the mayor. "We've never been a government that's ruled by a tyrannical majority."

Others in the audience said the tyranny is in forcing an unwilling public to go along with domestic partners benefits.

"What kind of government would force me to pay taxes for what I believe are immoral acts?" asked Paul Northrup. He added that he believed that was unconstitutional.

David Marcus said that by not distinguishing between gay and heterosexual couples when it came to health benefits, the city government would, in effect, be limiting its powers.

"I think it's time to keep government out of our bedrooms, and I want you guys to do it," he said.